Math Course Approvals

To obtain approval for courses taken during the summer and/or outside Boston College to count towards graduation and/or to satisfy program requirements, you'll need to fill out the standard Course Approval form available from Student Services or your Dean's office (and also now available in pdf form on-line) and provide:

Personal data as requested on the form (providing your e-mail address is helpful as well)

The institution where you'll take the course (it must be a four-year college—it cannot be a two-year or community college)

The course you'll take, when you'll take it, and at which campus you'll take it (many institutions have multiple locations)

A catalog description of the course (either with a copy of the institution's course catalog, or a URL reference to the electronic copy of the institution's course catalog)

Leave this information with the Mathematics office in Maloney Hall and if we find the course acceptable (perhaps 95% of the inquiries we receive for course requests are acceptable), we'll sign off on the course and return the form to you; then you return the form to your Dean.

Be sure to complete the necessary paperwork for a course approval before you take a course for math core credit. Credit is rarely granted for courses taken without prior approval.

In general, our definition of "acceptable" applies to almost any course that significantly overlaps one in our own course catalog. In addition to standard calculus courses, the courses we frequently accept as mathematics core curriculum substitutes are courses titled "Finite Mathematics," "Excursions in Math," and "Ideas in Math."

However, please know that we do not accept courses that carry the names "College Algebra," "PreCalculus," or "Statistics" as substitutes for the mathematics core curriculum requirement. If you are seeking approval to take a statistics course to meet program requirements for statistics, your paperwork should go through the Economics department.